Branding mistakes made by the Premier League logo

Starting in the 2016/17 season, the legendary English Premier League will drop its sponsor, Barclays, from its branding. The league has also taken as an opportunity to completely transform their logo.

There are many good reasons to redesign your logo. The most common are to realign a mark with a company development, or to actively change the public’s perception of a brand (possibly because of negative press). Those who decide to revise their corporate identity should do so conscientiously. A rebranding can create many risks for the future of a company; as many past examples have shown, a new logo can lead to discord among the customers. The new logo of the English Premier League is one of just these examples. Its new look polarized fans and sparked a contentious conversation. But you can learn from these errors.

Premier League: old vs. new logo

Oftentimes, the strong reactions of critics are due to one (or more) of four errors:

1. Emotional chaos
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Sports are an emotional experience for many fans. That emotion—the excitement and joy—is often times associated with a logo. These associations are often built up starting in childhood. And when that logo is changed, fans feel frustrated and betrayed, because something that brought them happiness and fond memories is suddenly gone. This frustration leads to negative feedback. A brand needs time to build up an emotional connection to their new look.

If you’re rebranding, take a lesson from the Premiere League logo and don’t be caught off guard by visceral emotional reactions to the change.

2. Lack of purpose
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If a rebrand is undertaken solely to make headlines or bring fresh wind to corporate communications, it’s not going to be successful. Instead of focusing on whether you like your old mark or not, you need to figure out what—if anything—is actually not working. Is it difficult to read or understand? Can it be mistaken for another brand or product? Does it not have any momentum? Is it tragically outdated? If you cannot answer yes to any of these questions, think carefully about whether or not you really need a rebrand.

What was so wrong on the old Premier League logo? It was identifiable, was very recognizable, and was not laughable outdated. In this case, the organization underwent a huge change when it decided to end its sponsorship agreement with Barclays, and instead go the route of American sports leagues, which feature very simple names (e.g. the National Football League (NFL) or Major League Baseball (MLB)). But was this reason enough to completely change the look of the organization’s logo? Could the same effect not have been achieved simply by dropping Barclays’ name?

When you rebrand, make sure you consider your reasons carefully.

3. Not considering history
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In any realignment, you should not forget where you come from. Consider what distinguished your previous logo. How has it caught the attention of customers or fans? It may be the color that has imprinted itself, a particular typeface or shape. It is advisable to retain some of the old elements. In the case of the Premier League logo, they only got this half right. Although the lion is still part of the logo, it’s depicted in a completely new, almost childlike style, which was not well received by the fans, who say the new design lacks the grace and power of the original.

4. Not standing out
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The old Premiere League logo had achieved cult status. It was unmistakable, unique. The same cannot be said of the new logo. So football fans reacted quickly, and let their associations run free. The main comparison—to the Walt Disney classic The Lion King—probably does not build the type of connections the English football league intended.

The outcry on the internet was great. A large amount of negative social feedback can be devastating to a brand.

Instead of adding to the malice, at 99designs we thought about what we could have done better in the design of the new logo. And we asked our design community to show us their ideas in a logo design contest.

The winning logo
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As our contest shows, there are a lot of ways to design a new Premier League logo. At first glance, many of these designs appear more appropriate than the actual new logo, but it’s worthwhile to compare these designs to the list of common mistakes in rebranding again and test the desired outcome.

Any comments?

How are any of the contest entries better than premier leagues own rebrand? It’s all just lion’s heads. If you go and state that that is the very mistake, then all the contest logo’s on this page make the same mistake, right? Don’t get me wrong, I like all of them. But none of them fix or adress the problem that is stated on this page. Just my two cents.

None of these are better than what Design Studio and Robin Brand Consultants created and it’s part of 99’s problem. There was sound reasoning for the redesign. These are just misguided and uninformed riffs on the new brand.

All of the new designs simply rip off the lion. No deep digging, just a different typeface and some very basic aesthetic changes. The only one who did anything semi-unique was Ariel-7. None of the others address the fans complaint that the old logo had grace and power. I’d argue much of that came from the traditional serif typeface and the upright, tall looking lion that shows his full body.

These artists ignored the audience and went all “Fox News” on this – took it to the spin zone and didn’t accomplish much in doing so. Anyone can make a logo look good, but none of these communicate the position and brand of the EPL very well.

None of these are better than the actual one. The winning entry is some Hooligan’s paintball league logo; the epitome of gaudy 1990s football style. It’s not a bad piece of artwork by any stretch, but it’s wildly inappropriate for the client and really fails all the tests you’ve laid out here except one: it definitely stands out, but at the expense of the emotional connection of the old one, the history of the league and its mark and wow, what does a splatter say about the most regal, prestigious football league on the planet? That mark is the definition of a true lack of purpose.